Isolationists in the Cold War Era

Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era, by Justus D. Doenecke, Bucknell University Press, Hardback, $17.50, ISBN 0-8387-1940-6.

Justus D. Doenecke's book is a veritable gold-mine of information for the serious scholar of Revisionist historiography. Although lacking the minute detail of a similar work, James J. Martin's American Liberalism and World Politics, it nevertheless will prove a fruitful source for future scholars delving into the immediate post-World War II period.

The views of Lawrence Dennis, Harry Elmer Barnes, John T. Flynn, Charles Callan Tansill, Charles A. Lindbergh, Norman Thomas, Frank Chodorov, Henry Regnery, William Henry Chamberlin, Frank Hanighen, and several dozen others are examined as to their attitude toward world events in the 1945-1960 period.

Although obviously sympathetic to the views of say, Lawrence Dennis – since Doenecke is an 'academic' historian (of the “He said it; not I” school) – lip-service must be paid to anti-McCarthyism, and there is a rather gratuitous anti-McCarthyism thrown in. McCarthy's escapades were after all, small time “stuff” compared to the exploits of Roosevelt and his “liberal” entourage.

In his acknowledgments Dr. Doenecke neatly juggles the names of James J. Martin and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., two very disparate figures, but the Professor perhaps should be forgiven his tightrope-walking. He has produced an eminently readable account of some of the most interesting American historians and publicists of the last fifty years.